Crowdsourcing

[telophase]

(Manually x-posting as the auto-crossposter doesn't seem to be working at the moment)

I'm working on a 5 x 8" B&W print ad for ConDFW for an ad swap with a local convention. Here's my first try.





As it's print, the smaller text next to the QR code will be perfectly visible. It's just our social media URLs, website, and email address. The QR code goes directly to our website.

My goals here are to communicate this information:

1) dates
2) guests of honor
3) the fact that we have a new hotel (it's got the same name as the old one, so confusing! Old: Crowne Plaza Suites Dallas. New: Crowne Plaza Dallas near Galleria-Addison)

Did I do that well? What do you think of the design? We're doing the retro thing this year

Thanks!

Comments

[weirdquark]

The guest of honor info and the new hotel info jumps out at you; the dates don't, but are perfectly findable. So you could make the dates a bit larger maybe. I don't know if there's a concise way to highlight the fact that the new hotel has the same name as the old one but is still a new hotel, but I foresee many people being confused.

Unrelated to your question but related to the con: If Thrud and I want to see if we can get a concert slot on the filk track of programming, should we use the contact form on the website, or is there someone in particular we could email?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I ended up hating this design and redid it. I tried to make the dates more prominent on the new version (just posted to LJ/DW).

We don't actually have a filk track (gasp! horror! I know!), but we usually set aside a room for filking after hours and can probably schedule something in there at a specific time. To explain why there's not more focus on filk I'd have to sit with you and explain how the group running this con, or at least the group that started it, all elder Cepheids from A&M, is a weird microcosm within Texas fandom, and out of bloody touch focused on different things. And one of the things about Cepheid is, for the most part, Cepheids hate filk and don't understand it or people who like and do it. So Dan the programming committee doesn't usually bother to set up filk-specific programming. So FenCon ends up being the con focused on traditional fanstuff, while we end up focused on writing- and publishing-related stuff.

That being said, this is a good time to request stuff to be added to programming as it's several months away. You can use either the contact form or the info@ address - the form just goes to that address anyway, with the subject line changing depending on what you pick in the form. :) Our director, Amie Spengler, and guest director, Dan Robb, both receive that email and forward stuff on to whatever officer's in charge of whatever the issue is (or take care of it themselves, and Dan has a tendency to forget to check if Amie took care of it first, so people sometimes get duplicate responses, oops).

I'd suggest you use the address and CC me (telophase14 @ gmail) on it--you can name-drop me as "Stephanie" and say you know me and I suggested you contact Dan or whatever. Mention if you'd like to be actual guests of the con - if all you're doing is filking, then it'd probably be best to say you'll buy badges, but if you're willing to flaunt publication/academic/genre credentials and sit on a panel or two otherwise, it could happen (only requires one person to - the other can get a comp badge as a companion/significant other/friend/whatever).

If I didn't make sense, email me at telophase14@gmail and I'll try to explain better!

EDIT: Also, as we're moving to a new hotel, we might have more programming space and be able to CREATE a bit of a filk track, too! Once you send the email I can then put discussion on the staff list about how much more programming space we'll have.

[weirdquark]

That makes sense and I'll have to see what Thrud wants to do, but she has various fannish/academic credentials and likes being on panels. Thanks!

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I really like the design, but I didn't notice the dates as all on the first view. I did find them when I specifically looked for them though they still didn't immediately pop out at me. I think it's because the rest of the poster flows together really well but the dates don't seem to "attach" to anything else, almost as if they were a quick last minute addition by someone who noticed no one had bothered to add them in anywhere else. If the dates were incorporated in to the CONDFW XII part some how it may scan better. Something like "You'll find us at... [big words]CONDFW XII[/ big words] ...on February 15-17, 2013".

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I ended up hating this design and redid it. I tried to make the dates more prominent on the new version (just posted to LJ/DW).

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

The exclamation mark after "new" makes me itch. I can see why you did it, so maybe I'm just being a fuddy-duddy.

Other than that, I like it. It's a nice clean design, very readable, and all of the necessary info (date, location, contact info) is easy to find.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:) There's a lot of vintage retro design that does that, but you're right: the "New!" needs to be in a different font than the rest of the slogan for it to work correctly.

I ended up hating this design anyway and redid it. I tried to make the dates more prominent on the new version (just posted to LJ/DW).

Thanks!